Hell
by ElliotJA
Summary: Captain Dallas is in purgatory. Inspired by the deleted "cocoon" scene from ALIEN.


Nightmare and lunacy exploded out of the darkness with a shriek as, in the light from the flamethrower Arthur Dallas held, he saw it: The thing which had emerged from Kane in a grotesque parody of childbirth, which had borne away Brett to God alone knew what. Its' skin - if it could be called skin - jet black, ridged, bony, like the inside of the derelict on LV-426; its' elongated skull smooth and glistening, no eyes that Dallas could see. But he knew it saw him, for it reached for him with those long, dark talons.

In his horrified shock Dallas could not even scream as the alien enveloped him in its' long arms like solidified oil. It had mocked childbirth in its' killing of Kane and entrance into the world, now it mocked a parent lovingly hugging a child. Through the clammy, cold claws locked around his head, Dallas was aware of being dragged along the shadowy ducts at awful speed, helpless, up, down and sideways, like some demented fairground ride. His body crashed into walls as it was hurtled along, the pain mating with the terror and dizziness, blotting out his consciousness...

OOOOOOOO

 _He'd been awarded the Sunburst Medal of Honor after Torin Prime. A war hero. Captain of his own ship in the Outer Rim Defence Fleet. Up, up, and away...until Thedus; until the_ Archangel _blew up. Over fifteen thousand dead. He got the blame. Arthur Dallas, guilty. Glory and respect straight out of the goddamn airlock._

 _For three years afterward he wandered in and out of an assortment of lowlife bars, polluting his body with cheap booze. When he met Captain Joshua in one such bar one night it wasn't hard for him, even in his half-drunken state, to see what kind of man he was faced with. Not exactly wholesome, but Dallas didn't exactly have a shining rep himself. It wasn't as though his life was going anywhere. So when Joshua, sitting across the table from him in the smoke-filled joint, said in his oily voice "I could really use a guy with your skills, Art, and you could use the money", it didn't take long for him to agree to join Joshua's little crew on the_ Vidar _, supplying certain "sensitive items to the needy" in the colonies._

 _The_ Vidar _was not the most comfortable ship Dallas had ever been on, or the most hygenic. The same could be said of Captain Joshua's crew, whom Dallas avoided as much as possible. But it was a job that paid fairly well, and as long as you weren't caught, and didn't think too much about some of the "merchandise" this bunch shipped, or who they sold it to, you were okay._

 _Six months Dallas was with them. It was around the third month when he learned Joshua had moved up to smuggling pure Arcturan glowsand, and it became harder for Dallas to sleep at night. They hadn't long left Tau Ceti when the news came in of a bunch of glowsanders - just kids - going wild in a habitat block, killing some folks, then stealing a flier and dying when they crashed it at the spaceport. Authorities reckoned the kids' brains would've ruptured soon anyway, the amount of glowsand they'd took...and Dallas knew with a sick certainty where they'd got it from._

 _Surprisingly, Joshua allowed Dallas to walk away freely when he told him he couldn't take it anymore. When the_ Vidar _next touched down Joshua tood at the outer hatch and watched Dallas walk away for the final time. Dallas turned his head once and looked at Joshua, a motionless black shadow against the red lighting of the ship's interior, and knew they both thought the same thing: He was still fucked._

OOOOOOOO

Uttering a short grunt, Dallas returned to wakefulness. The first two things he was aware of were a horrible sense of weakness, and an even more horrible sense of pain all through him, which would have made him howl loudly in agony had he been able. All he could manage now was a low, choking whimper. He felt as though his body had been dunked in a bath of acid - like the thing on Kane's face had bled - that was slowly, torturously burning him away, dizzolving him... _Why?_

And there was something else: He couldn't move. Not just from the terrible weakness, but from something holding him in place, a strange substance he could not identify. Fighting back the pain, fatigue and dread, Dallas slowly forced his eyes open to find himself in a dark chamber. His ears detected the faint sound of engines relentlessly thundering, and he thought he could just about discern hulks of machinery around him...so he was still somewhere on the _Nostromo_. He was unsure if his inability to see very clearly was due to the ship's lighting here or his own weakness.

Then, through the fiery pain, he heard something, nearby in the dark: A sibilant hissing not produced by the ship. His lungs could not produce a scream as he realized _It_ was here in this black pit with him, he could just whimper in terror. The hissing grew louder. Something loomed in front of him. He glimpsed whitish teeth like knives, inches from his sweating face. It studied Dallas, not striking, just quietly observing him in his torment. He was at its' mercy; why didn't the bastard just kill him? Was he in a larder, to be eaten later? Or...did it need him for something else, like the thing from the egg had needed Kane? In a monstrous epiphany, it came to him. The pain...the weakness...the peculiar substance engulfing him, eroding him...why the alien had spared him. It was _changing_ him. Into what he was not quite sure, but he knew it would be horrible, part of its' cycle. He was being broken down, mutated, perverted. The screams died stillborn in his throat, smothered in gurgles.

OOOOOOOO

 _His breath loud inside the confines of his pressure helmet, Dallas walked with nervous, awkward footsteps across the raised platform toward the weirdly designed chair, built for something far bigger and taller than a human being. Yet as he drew nearer, he saw that a human figure did lie in it. It was himself reclining there, eyes closed, still, pale._

 _The eyes of his twin snapped open. White, sickly, unnatural. His screams were silent as a thin line appeared down the middle of the body of his mirror image. The line cracked wide open, and from the shadow within the husk crawled creeping horror: Spider, crab, serpent, claws like a skeleton's bony digits. Leaping for his face..._

OOOOOOOO

Dallas woke from one nightmare, and straight into another. One only death could wake him from. Very little of his human form remained now, he could tell. Legs, arms...gone, broken down into vileness.

As nearly useless as his eyes were, he detected a faint source of new light not far off. Short, metallic sounds accompanied it. A body moving...not the alien...one of the crew. A hoarse moan escaped his parched lips. Another. The lonely flicker of a flame crept nearer from the dark, and its' glow revealed a face...Ripley! In that moment she was so beautiful, like an angel descended into Hell to lift him up to Heaven. "Dallas..." He heard her gasp his name as she caught sight of him. His lungs barely worked. He tried to say 'Kill me', but it emerged a long, dessicated groan. He heard her say "I'll get you out of here...get you up to the shuttle..."

Dallas knew it was far too late. There was only one way for his suffering to end here and now. From his wretched innards he managed to dredge up the words "Kill me!" Ripley kept looking up at what remained of him, anguished, indecisive. _Please, Ripley_ , he thought. _Be my angel...my salvation_. Again he croaked "Kill me!" A brief moment passed. Then the fire from Ripley's gun raised higher and, as he watched through pain-wracked eyes, the fire blossomed toward him. Bright, pure, cleansing. An angel had rescued him...


End file.
